Essays in Public Finance and Education

This dissertation studies the role of private agents in increasing tax compliance and documents the effects of fiscal and behavioral inefficiencies that distort human capital formation. Chapter 1, joint with Keshav Choudhary, analyzes firms’ response to changes in size- based exemptions from third-party audits and shows that third-party auditors help the government in raising tax compliance and government revenue. Using administrative panel data from India, we develop a novel empirical framework that considers dynamic responses of a firm to such exemptions and conduct a difference-in-differences analysis. Our estimates suggest that firms remit 20 percent higher taxes and report 16 percent higher taxable income, once they are subject to third-party audits. Using these estimates, we conclude that the policy is cost-effective and raises net social benefit. Chapter 2, joint with Hoyt Bleakley, analyzes the fiscal costs and benefits related to schooling decisions. We use a Mincer-like model to characterize the fiscal externality associated with an additional year of schooling. Then we estimate the gap between fiscal benefits and costs by combining recently available data on school subsidies with the Nepalese household consumption survey. We find that within primary school, at a discount rate of 3 %, the fiscal benefits and costs, on the margin, are quite balanced, with subsidies closest to the present value of future taxes minus benefits. At higher levels of schooling, however, marginal fiscal benefits exceed costs by 5 percent of per-capita consumption. Chapter 3 studies the effects of taste-based discrimination on the educational outcomes of the children in India. Using nationally-representative data, we find that there is a declining birth-order gradient in the learning outcomes of both boys and girls. Conditional on birth-order, boys outperform girls which indicates general son-preferences. Moreover, after controlling for birth-order effects, boys with no elder brother perform better than boys who have an elder brother. This indicates preferences towards elder sons in the family. The gap widens in districts with higher elder-son preferences and results in a steeper birth-order gradient in those districts. Societal preferences affect learning through differential allocation of educational resources within a family.PHDEconomicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162907/1/bhanug_1.pd

Stability Analysis of Integrated Pest Management with Impulsive Biological Control

The aim of the present work is to study the dynamics of stage-structured pest control model including biological control, i.e. by releasing of natural enemies and infected pests periodically. It is assumed that only immature susceptible pests are attacked by natural enemies admitting Beddington DeAngelis functional response and mature susceptible pests are contacted by infected pests with bilinear incidence rate and become exposed. The sufficient condition for local stability of pest extinction periodic solution is derived by making use of Floquet’s theory and small amplitude perturbation technique. The global attractivity of pest extinction periodic solution is also established by applying comparison principle of impulsive differential equations

Conversational Machine Comprehension: a Literature Review

Conversational Machine Comprehension (CMC), a research track in conversational AI, expects the machine to understand an open-domain natural language text and thereafter engage in a multi-turn conversation to answer questions related to the text. While most of the research in Machine Reading Comprehension (MRC) revolves around single-turn question answering (QA), multi-turn CMC has recently gained prominence, thanks to the advancement in natural language understanding via neural language models such as BERT and the introduction of large-scale conversational datasets such as CoQA and QuAC. The rise in interest has, however, led to a flurry of concurrent publications, each with a different yet structurally similar modeling approach and an inconsistent view of the surrounding literature. With the volume of model submissions to conversational datasets increasing every year, there exists a need to consolidate the scattered knowledge in this domain to streamline future research. This literature review attempts at providing a holistic overview of CMC with an emphasis on the common trends across recently published models, specifically in their approach to tackling conversational history. The review synthesizes a generic framework for CMC models while highlighting the differences in recent approaches and intends to serve as a compendium of CMC for future researchers.Comment: Accepted to COLING 202

Ballistic Studies on TiB2-Ti Functionally Graded Armor Ceramics

The objective of this paper is to discuss the results of the ballistic testing of the spark plasma sintered TiB2-Ti based functionally graded materials (FGMs) with an aim to assess their performance in defeating small-calibre armor piercing projectiles. We studied the efficacy of FGM design and compared its ballistic properties with those of TiB2-based composites as well as other competing ceramic armors. The ballistic properties are critically analyzed in terms of depth of penetration, ballistic efficiency, fractographs of fractured surfaces as well as quantification of the shattered ceramic fragments. It was found that all the investigated ceramic compositions exhibit ballistic efficiency (η) of 5.1 -5.9. We also found that by increasing the thickness of FGM from 5mm to 7.8 mm, the ballistic property of the composite degraded. On comparing the results with available armor systems, it has been concluded that TiB2 based composites show better ballistic properties except B4C. SEM analysis of the fragments showed that the FGM fractured by mixed mode of failure.Defence Science Journal, 2012, 62(6), pp.382-389, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.62.266

Overview of LVDS and HVDS with Distribution Losses

The distribution system is a part of the electronic energy system by giving power to individual homes. Highly standardized LV distribution cables build a network in large towns and cities via link devices. For each (fused) distribution leaving a transformer, certain interconnections are disconnected, resulting in a branching wide radial distribution system. A more expense tapering circumferential supply chain, in which thinner connections are added as the distances from the a transformer increases, is typically utilized in less population centers. This study discussed transmission systems . for example as well as several types of promotional systems, including such high power and high power logistics operation

A comparative study of efficacy and safety of intravenous ferric carboxymaltose versus iron sucrose in the treatment of iron deficiency anaemia of pregnancy in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Anaemia is a global public health problem. To optimize iron delivery in pregnancy, new intravenous complexes like Ferric carboxymaltose (FCM) have been developed in the few years. This study aims to compare the efficacy and safety of FCM vs the iron sucrose during pregnancy.Methods: This study was conducted in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Shri Maharaja Gulab Singh (S.M.G.S.) Hospital, Government Medical College Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir over a period of 1 year. 100 pregnant females with haemoglobin (Hb) in the range 7-9.9 g/dl between 28 to 36-week gestation, were selected randomly out of which 50 were administered FCM (Group A) and 50 were administered Iron Sucrose (Group B). Hb and serum ferritin were assessed 2 weeks and 4 weeks after treatment and side effects of each drug was studied.Results: The rise in mean Hb level at 2 weeks and 4 weeks in FCM group was significantly higher as compared to Iron Sucrose group (1.09 versus 0.52 g/dl and 1.80 versus 1.09 g/dl, respectively). Similarly, the rise in mean serum ferritin level at 2 weeks and 4 weeks was more in FCM as compared to Iron Sucrose group (144.25 vs 95.84 mcg/L and 121.31 vs 84.46 mcg/L, respectively). The adverse reactions were observed in 30% of patients in FCM group and 48% patients in iron sucrose group.Conclusions: Ferric carboxymaltose was found to be more safe and efficacious as compared to iron sucrose

Encapsulation of gamma-Fe2O3 decorated reduced graphene oxide in polyaniline core-shell tubes as an exceptional tracker for electromagnetic environmental pollution

The ultimate goal of the development of a new material gamma-Fe2O3 decorated reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-polyaniline (PANI) core-shell tubes has been done for absorbing electromagnetic interference (EMI) pollution. Herein, we report on the synthesis and characterization of PANI tubes consisting of rGO decorated with iron oxide nanoparticles (RF). The intercalated RF was synthesized by thermal decomposition of ferric acetyl acetonate in a reducing atmosphere. Furthermore, RF was encapsulated through oxidative polymerization of aniline in the presence of beta-naphthalene sulphonic acid which results in RF-PANI core-shell morphology. Scanning electron microscopy results confirm the formation of tubular core-shell morphology having 5-15 mu m length and 1-5 mu m diameter. The presence of rGO-gamma-Fe2O3 in PANI core enhances the interfacial polarization and the effective anisotropy energy of the composite which contributes to more scattering and leads to high shielding effectiveness (SET similar to 51 dB) at a critical thickness of 2.5 mm. Additionally, the effective complex permeability and permittivity parameters of the composites have been evaluated from the experimental scattering parameters (S-11 & S-21) using theoretical calculations given in Nicholson-Ross and Weir algorithms